cherie’s remix

A couple of days ago I heard myself tell a sweet, little old lady that this has been one helluva year.

Hearing this surprised me a little.  Not only that I could say something so crude as “helluva”  to someone 30 years my senior…but also to have something that sounded so old and crotchety and negative pop out of my mouth.

But…no shizzle…It HAS been a helluva year.

Losing my mother-in-law to Alzheimer’s.  Tom’s polymyalgia.  Moving into a new house right in the middle of all that (I’m not complaining, I’m just saying…buying and moving across state after 27 years in the same old house when your husband can’t stay awake for more than 30 minutes at a time and feels like crap the rest of the time is a thousand kinds of work and worry I never anticipated…even on my worst kvetching days.)  Still…a year later…trying to get work done on the old house to get it ready for the market (what market?).  The sad debacle of our saggy 401K.  Tom losing his job out of the blue.  Totally restructuring the business part of the farm.  Poring, poring, poring over the numbers to figure out how everyone gets paid.  And on top of everything else…hopping and hobbling around with increasing pain in my foot and leg…bad enough that I finally had to bite the bullet and go to the doctor…who orders an MRI and sends me to a podiatrist/surgeon who gives me the good news and the bad news.  Torn tendon caused by flat foot…which needs sewing and synthetic graft and maybe sawing through my heel so this will never – ever – EVER happen again.  So that, after I’m all healed – in about 18 months or so – I’ll even be able to run marathons.  Which is mighty intriguing, since I’ve never been able to run them before.

Anyway.

So…as my dwindling fan base has noticed…I’ve been blogless in Waukee.  And, of all my tales of woe…this is one of the most daunting for me as ME…that I can’t bring myself to write.  I fell in love with writing when I was 17…almost 40 years ago…and have never been too far from the pen since.  I’ve pretty much always been as full of words as I am full of  a few other things.   

Writing…good, bad, indifferent…is a God-given thing for me.  It helps me connect with The Light.  I start out writing…spinning and crazy.  I keep writing through it and something better starts to emerge from the shadows.  I begin to remember the positive…that it’s not, in fact, ALWAYS All About Me.  If I’m lucky, I actually remember gratitude and hope and what a great opportunity I’ve been given to live and experience and write about the human condition.  Writing is a little mystical for me that way…when I will allow it.  Working at being honest and fresh…it connects me to God and myself and other people.  When I collaborate and cooperate with God, it’s a pretty good gift to me.  Sometimes for others.  And, hopefully, even for God himself.

But lately?  Not so much. 

I used to write funny…which is my favorite…and why I started blogging in the first place.  Writing humor is HARD and I needed lots of practice (which I found out when I did my best writing for a little piece to send to Reader’s Digest…Humor in Something or Other… it came out stilted and dopey, despite hours of sweating and pencil biting).  Humor takes time and effort…it takes me awhile to get there…even though I think I’m freaking hilarious off the cuff…apparently, there’s a fine a line between cheesy and funny.  It’s WAY harder than it looks.  I can start writing at 6:30 a.m. and just be finishing up at 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  Which leaves me with a writing hangover and causes me to quickly eat copious amounts of chocolate bran muffins (I’m on Weight Watchers now) and slug down frosty glasses of Diet Mug Root Beer until I’m feeling all better…or fall over sideways on the couch in a carb coma. 

But lately?  I just haven’t been able to get there…you know, to the place BEFORE the carb coma…

The only writing I seem to get done is my increasingly whiney and repetitious journal and maybe sending off a note in an occasional, tardy greeting card – and it feels more like penance and punishment than anything else.

All that to say…sorry, sorry.  Sorry.  But what’s a girl to do? 

There’s a line in the Book of Job that goes something like:  “That which I feared has come upon me.”  One of my biggest fears has been that I would lose my ability to walk.  Which would, in no time flat, morph me into a candidate for the Clinic Out East for the Super Morbidly Obese.  I’d be the ginormous red-head, facing into the corner, whispering into my cell phone my order to Pizza Hut; then crouch-walking my wheelchair to the front door at 11 p.m. for my Extra Large Super Supreme (easy on the green peppers).

In case you’re interested…and especially if you haven’t pissed God off recently…I would love it if you would pray for me and my right foot.  We are going to surgery next Monday.  Apparently, we’re going to be on crutches for 4 weeks; then in one of those big honkin’ boot things for another 4. 

Tom Bell will be cooking for me.  His signature meal (“signature” meaning “only”) is venison steak, microwave baked potatoes and canned cream-style corn.

No driving for 8 weeks – try to wrap your brain around that one. 

I’m telling this all to my internist yesterday…who laughs and said, “Oh, like driving Miss Daisy!” 

Bing!  Bing!  Bing!  Light bulb over my head…I say, “Hey, can I get one of those handicap permits?”  Voila!  I have one for the next 12 weeks…so for any of you who covet handicap parking…who will actually pray for me and haven’t pissed off God recently…come visit me in a few weeks and we’ll go honky tonkin’.

You drive.

Here’s a scripture I found this morning when I was putzing around in some old emails:

We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 

The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 

But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.

This is how we know we are in him:  Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.     I John 2:3-6

I LOVE John.  I’m pretty sure (today) that he’s my favorite Bible writer.  Maybe it’s because he’s always juxtaposing opposites:  light and dark, truth and lies, life and death, love and hate…love those juxtapositions of contrasts.

Contrasts R Us.

Anyway.

We all know what we mean when we say we know someone.  But the Greek word for to know here in this scripture means more.  It translates:  to be aware of, be sure, understand.  

John is talking about a distinct kind of knowledge of God.  Something much more than a casual acquaintance.  And look how many times he puts know in these lines. 

“We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.”    In other words, we understand that we will be aware of, be sure of, understand  God IF we obey him.

“The man who says ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar…”    So…if we say we are aware of, sure of, understand  God, but don’t obey him? We’re big fat liars. 

Ouch.

“This is how we know we are in him…[we] must walk as Jesus did.”   

Pretty tall order.

Obviously, this isn’t referring to things like head knowledge or theories about God.  Not some God-in-the-Abstract or God-in-Principle.  Or…oh, yeah, uh huh, I know God…he’s up there,  all right…The-Creative-Mind-Divine-Intelligence-Creator-of-the-Universe-Big-Guy-Upstairs.   

Instead, John wants us to understand that this obeying and knowing promises actual intimacy, a particular brand of closeness with God.  A promise that we can hook up closely to all that’s good and light-filled.  Compassion.  Mercy.  Humor.  Love. 

The other day I was talking to one of the kids about relationships and how hard they are (for me, anyway) because they require so much focus and commitment and time and maybe even trying to see something from someone else’s perspective. (Crap!)  I thought back to a few years ago when I was finishing up my degree and was just so overwhelmed with the commitment of studying and keeping house and raising kids.  I don’t know if my marriage would have withstood the pressure if Tom and I hadn’t committed to spending every Friday night together…(I was taking the equivalent of 17 hours per semester and it was THE one and only night a week that I didn’t study).  We made time for each other – not that those dates were always spectacular examples of marital bliss, sometimes (not always, thank goodness) we were just making a date to argue about bills or the kids or the latest unfinished home repair project.  But the point is that we were carving out time from two crazy schedules because we valued our relationship.  That sacrifice of time and focus kept “us” alive. 

As I’m sharing this with the kid, I’m thinking, why don’t I do more of this with the Lord?  I can go weeks at home without reading my Bible or praying much more than the “How are You?  I’m fine. Please help everybody in the world.  Amen.”  kind of prayer.  It doesn’t take much of that before life seems overwhelming and arbitrary and full of work and woe, and I’m caught in a stinky pit of self pity and fear and confusion.  

For me, knowing God means that I should somehow get to know him well enough to be aware of, be sure, understand  what he means to me and what I mean to him.  And what he would like for me to do. 

Easier said than done. 

God’s a complicated guy and not always that forthcoming, so it’s probably going to take longer than I think it should to know him and his will for me. 

I’m a complicated girl and not always that forthcoming either, so it’s probably going to take longer than God thinks it should for me to be willing to obey.

And it seems to be that our willingness to obey may actually be the precursor to our finding out what God is inviting us to do. 

Sheesh. 

A good start for me is Sunday morning.  My butt in the pew.  It’s the absolute minimum. 

I think this is because my short-term memory sucks radically.  I have pretty much totally forgotten a “Love Thy Neighbor” sermon by Tuesday afternoon.  Especially after being snipped at by an automated voice that wants me to properly pronounce fluticasone propionate over the phone before it will tell me how much this prescription will cost.  Swearing at robot voices is an exercise in futility, not to mention the opposite of Loving Everybody.  (Or is it?  Does that voice count…because there is no BODY…so, you tell me.)

Hanging out with people who hang out with Jesus helps immensely…especially if they love me and I can trust them. 

Reading the Bible helps too…but it’s better for me to do more than just read it…like meditating on it, rolling it around on my tongue, flapping at other people about it, writing about it. 

It’s way better when I let go of the   A + B + C = Spiritual Giant   formulas in lieu of opening (and re-opening) my heart and mind to the fact that I pretty much need to be saved over and over, every single day.  Which, there again…you tell me if that sounds easy.

Then comes the effort to recognize AND try to live in The Truth….which takes a STINKING amount of work…even under the best of circumstances.

I do a LOT better when I don’t get freaked out by the fact that everything good…everything God in my life…is basically a process of renewing my commitment to him over and over and over and over again.  

For a perfectionist, enough is never enough.  Others think that God should be grateful for any bit or portion of attention they bestow upon him. 

Me?  I go back and forth.  I’m not proud of it.  I’m just saying.

It’s the lament of all us bi-polar OCD, post modern, perfectionist Jesus types – self diagnosed or otherwise.  But…we do what we can.

The pay off (thank GOD there’s a payoff) is that, for those of us who don’t wimp out, we DO start to know God better, to feel him close by us.  And, then, this kind of mystical thing happens – that day when obedience to God doesn’t sound so huge and scary and/or boring and/or overwhelming and/or insane.  It starts to sound exciting and a little jazzy. 

And shakin’ it up is all about excitin’ and jazzy.